I was chatting with a friend of mine the other day about what we were playing and he dropped a line that resonated with me. He said, “MMOs are an easy way I can play online with my friends, but I don’t prefer them as games.” As any true fanboy would, I mentally started to rise to the challenge, ready to defend my preferred genre with a discussion of how deep, complex and hard to design the typical MMO is, but I stopped myself and instead went over my own current playlist. Here’s what I am playing right now:
King’s Bounty: The Legend – A fun, tactical wargame/rpg in the vein of Heroes of Might and Magic and of course, the original King’s Bounty. A simple, but fun battle game with the RPG elements of quests and leveling your hero.
Borderlands – If Diablo and Call of Duty had a baby in a stylish, cel-shaded hospital staffed by Fallout 3, you would get Borderlands. An awesome, co-op shooter with the RPG elements of quests, leveling and loot. Heck, there are even pick-up groups for when I feel the need to have someone steal rare loot from me because “his buddy’s other character might be able to use it.” What is more MMO than that?!
Fort Zombie – A clunky, buggy RPG about surivival after a zombie apocolypse… but a great game nonetheless. Rescue survivors, scavenge for supplies and prepare your fort for the coming darkness. If I were writing a Zombie MMO, I would start here for inspiration.
Elona – A roguelike that looks like an old-style JRPG, but has neat features like customizable housing, randomized side-quests and investing in shops.
King Arthur The Role-Playing Wargame — A cross between Total War and Master of Magic set in the myths of King Arthur? Sign me up!
Oh yeah and I am still messing around with Champions Online… on the side!? Heck, last night I was seriously considering reinstalling my old copy of Dungeon Lords for something “new”… which is the computer game equivalent to slitting one’s wrists while listening to Gordon Lightfoot. So, for the moment at least, like my friend, it seems I don’t prefer MMOs as games either.
This isn’t all bad (though from a standpoint of blogging about MMOs, it sucks) and probably not unexpected either. Part of it is a light case of burnout. (I think most MMO-fans have suffered from burnout at one time or another.) Another part of it is a bit of disappointment in the latest crop of games. I still think MMOs are the most complex and hardest games to design, but it seems that for all of that complexity, we are stuck in a rut of shallow, repetitive, themepark games that are all scrambling for scraps in WOW’s very long shadow. I still love MMOs for the character building and the persistent worlds. Unfortunately, most single-player RPGs offer even more character build options and most MMO designers have scrapped persistent worlds for linear hack-fests and fetch quests.
So… what does all of this mean? Well, I think it means I need a new MMO. Something different and fresh that can shock me out of my funk a bit. That is where I need your help. I need suggestions. What games are you playing and enjoying? Do you have any games that you feel are substantially different from the normal MMO fare? Do you have a game you are just plain dying to hear about?
Fire off a comment and help me find a new game… please… before I press install on Dungeon Lords…
Unfortunately, I don’t have anything for you. I’m in the same position as you. Playing Borderlands, Dragon Age and Trials HD. Looking forward to the suggestions though.
Back to Eve it is then!
jpwoo — Man, Eve is a game I would love to like, but I just can’t. It pretty much hits on all of my MMO criteria except for the “more exciting than drying paint” one. And by the way, what the heck is that girl doing with that bust of Gordon Lightfoot?
Your friend has a point, MMOG’s are not good games on their own merit. They’re the most fun when you’re able to interact with the other players. In other words, the chat window. Sure, actually playing with other people is tons o’ fun but that’s not always possible, but even then it’s that chat window that enables most of the actual inter-player interaction. (Or VOIP but some people still refuse to partake of that in PC-land.)
We can defend MMOG’s all we want because we enjoy them so much. Or do we? Sometimes I think we just think we’ve invested so much of our time that even though maybe we’re “seeing the man behind the curtain” we’re unwilling to cut our losses. If you took your all-time favorite MMOG but you were the only player on the entire server, would that MMOG in fact be fun enough to keep you entertained very long? Probably not. (I’ve been in that situation with more than one game, so I can speak from my own experience that *for me* MMOG’s are atrocious games with no one else to interact with.)
I still don’t get the whole Borderlands :: Fallout 3 comparison. Borderlands isn’t post-apocalyptic. At all. If anything, it shares more with Firefly because at its heart it’s a sci-fi western.
So let me get this straight: you find yourself in an MMOG funk because you’re “seeing the man behind the curtain” in every MMOG, have acknowledged (but not accepted) that single-player RPG’s at this point in time have superior character building and worlds, yet your proposed solution is to find a new MMOG? Might I suggest an addiction intervention instead? Regardless, you’re not going to find *anything* out there that is “new and fresh” like you asked. Someone suggested EVE which technically isn’t “new” but it might be new to you if you haven’t played it. Otherwise your choices are pretty much: EVE (space, skill trees), Darkfall (fantasy, skill trees, open pvp) or your choice of hundreds of DIKU-based clones. I lump all those together since under the hood they’re all the same game. If you’re tired of one DIKU-clone, somehow I doubt jumping into another DIKU-clone where the only differences are the graphics and sounds would count as “new and fresh” much less cure your funk.
Answering the Borderlands :: Fallout 3 issue: If I were playing a game in which I traveled the space lanes, smuggling goods and taking shady jobs in my stylish trenchcoat, then I’d say Borderlands felt like Firefly. Since I am slogging through the desert that happens to have piles of rusty junk everywhere, fighting mutants (bandits, whatever) in dune buggies… Mad Max it is!!!
Borderlands might not be a bad model for the future of MMO’s. We can call it the Mini MMO or MMMO. It has leveling and loot, and the one of the main interactions in an MMO, trading loot has remained. it is similar to what guild wars was trying.
When I look at the Multiplayer online games I keep coming back to none of them are really MMO’s in the traditional sense. I play team fortress 2, eat poop u cat (http://www.eatpoopucat.com/), and online poker. But they all have taken something from the MMO model, rewards for grinding. TF2 has rare unlockable hats, EPUC has a kudos system and keeps track of people with the best panels, and pokers grinding reward is money over time.
Why i think I keep coming back to these games rather than MMO’s (which I enjoy) is that all these games reward skill to a much greater extent than MMO’s which tend to reward time invested.
So maybe it is time to look for an MMO that runs in Hard mode.
“So maybe it is time to look for an MMO that runs in Hard mode.”
My thoughts exactly!
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Something needs to be done about, what feels to me, like a waste of time working up to max level so that I can START playing the game I wanted in the first place. It takes 15 minutes to learn your new spells as you level, not multiple hours for each of 80 levels. Screw levels all together. Advance by getting access to more options to choose from, rather then actually getting stronger (kind of like GW).
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The lack of levels in Eve is one of my favorite things about it. Newer players may not have as many options, or access to as much stuff, but they are still useful, still have a role in the universe. I wish something like this would be used in a more accessible MMO.
Ive heard a lot of bad things about Darkfall, but I’m tempted anyways just because it sounds so much like some of my favorite MMO’s: Ultima Online and Shadowbane. To be fair though, in SB i got lucky and happened to be in the guild that ended up running the entire server. Kind of makes it more fun.
Qix,
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I have been considering Darkfall for a while as well, mostly as a change of pace to the now-traditional quest treadmill. Of course, DFO has its own grind as you have to level your skills to be competetive.
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Still, might be interesting.
Have you looked at NavyField ? Kind of a mmo. they call it a ‘massively multi-player naval strategy game.’ Its pretty fun game I just can’t help but keep going back to while in a mmo rut.
On a side note, I think that Darkfall might be one of those that I keep going back to, As tomorrow I’ll get started playing it again.
Game is such a adrenaline rush at times.